The change towards the creative economy has major implications for the nature of what we have called assets. In the industrial age, the assets were physical resources, plant and equipment. Most of the resources were traded in markets and could thus be valued. Taking care of the value of an organization could be understood as managing physical assets and resources.

Now knowledge and people are seen as the major assets. But since neither of them are efficiently traded in markets, their value cannot easily be measured. Knowledge can neither be understood as an asset that can be managed like a physical asset. This is what many people within the Knowledge Management community learned the hard way. Knowledge is not a thing! Thus it cannot be stored, measured or shared.

From a more modern point of view, knowledge creation is understood as an active process of communication between people. Knowledge cannot be stored but is all the time constructed and re-constructed in interaction. Knowledge cannot be shared but arises in action. Knowledge is the process of relating.

The assumption was that learning and knowledge management involve processes that transmit content. This notion derived from the information theory/model of communication developed by Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver. Their theory created a sender receiver model of communication according to which person A sends a signal (message/content) to person B, who receives it and then perhaps sends a responding feedback signal back to A. From this perspective, learning and knowledge creation are processes that resemble transmission or sharing of content. This is why schools and other educational institutions still look the way they are.

But the Shannon & Weaver concept was meant to be purely technical. They were interested whether a byte sent was a byte received in a technical sense. They said nothing about the meaning of the bytes. For a human being a message can evoke a very wide range of associations and interpretations depending on the experience and emotional state of the individual. One person's interpretation is never quite the same as another person's interpretation. There is no linear causality in the world of human beings.

If learning was understood from a more modern relational perspective it would resemble a process of many voices interacting at the same time. In this way, each comes to know the context in which the other makes meaning. The progression of B's understanding of A's story constitutes also a change for A's story creating new meaning, learning, for both.

Social media are most meaningful when giving voice to multiple perspectives, making it possible to seek out, recognize and respect differences as different but equal.

All stories continue, meaning that learning takes place, as participants create a more shared understanding of what the other means. Knowledge that used to be regarded as independently existing in people and things becomes viewed as co-constructed in communication.

Communication does not represent things in the world. It brings people and things into being in constantly surprising ways.

Supportive, energizing and enabling patterns of interaction are the most important "assets" of a modern organization. That is what should be nurtured and taken care of. Communication either accelerates and opens up possibilities or slows down and limits what would be possible. Communication either creates value or creates waste. Communication either creates energy and inspiration or demeans and demotivates.

Information theory is not only unhelpful but harmful, when trying to understand communication between human beings. Communication is not about sharing information but a process of formation.

Esko Kilpi is the founder and principal of Esko Kilpi Ltd, a leading research and consultancy firm working with digital, network based work.

The organization is based in Helsinki, Finland. In addition to his work as an executive adviser Esko Kilpi takes part in academic research and lectures on the topics of interactive value creation, agile methods, relational view of the firm and Internet based technologies in Europe, Middle-East, Far-East and USA.

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Previously:
Introduction: Communities of Practice and Social Learning Systems: the Career of a Concept.
A social systems view on learning: communities of practice as social learning systems
A community...

Productivity: The amount of output per unit of input (labor, equipment, and capital).
Enterprise has for long understood, and applied, that training and education are an important part of its hunt for competitive advantages. ...

In my last post, I asked some questions about formalising informal learning. And answered them. If:
you understand that formalising informal learning will have organisation-wide consequences
you use...

What do we meet at the corner of Assertiveness and Cooperation?
The Thomas-Kilmann assessment suggests that it's Collaboration.
Their assessment, which is the basis for many others, explores different...